Darwin, Charles Ben, 1822-1901

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin of Lichfield and Josiah Wedgwood. He entered the University of Edinburgh in 1825 to study medicine, intending to follow his father Robert's career as a doctor. However, Darwin found himself unenthusiastic about his studies, including that of geology, and left Edinburgh without graduating in 1827. Forming the intention of entering the church, Darwin came up to Cambridge in 1828, and though not finding the formal studies any more to his taste than those at Edinburgh, he formed a friendship with the professor of botany, John Stevens Henslow, and began enthusiastically to study the subject. After graduating in 1831, Darwin was recommended by Henslow to Robert Fitzroy, commander of HM Sloop Beagle, as a naturalist to sail on a circumnavigational voyage Fitzroy was planning. Returning from the Beagle voyage in 1836, Darwin enjoyed a publishing success with his volume Journal of researches...during the voyage of HMS Beagle, married his cousin Emma Wedgwood, and moved to the Kent village of Down, where he spent the rest of his life. It was at Down House that Darwin wrote On the origin of species by means of natural selection, 1859, and a series of monographs in botany, entomology and anthropology.

Charles Ben Darwin (1822-1901) was born in Ohio and received a Master of Arts degree from Oberlin College. In the 1840s he worked as a French tutor in Louisiana before moving to Tennessee, where he was admitted to the state bar in 1848. He soon joined a group of prospectors and traveled to California, arriving in Sacramento in 1849. After a short-lived attempt at gold-mining, Darwin briefly opened a law office in San Francisco before returning east via Mexico, finally settling in Burlington, Iowa. He was made principal of North Hill High School in 1852, although by the late 1850s he had resumed practicing law. He worked on the Revision of 1860, which codified Iowa's laws and was often referred to as "Darwin's Code." Darwin was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 1866, but sometime in 1868 he left Iowa for the Washington Territory. He was made a federal judge near Seattle, but was ousted by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869 and returned to San Francisco, where he continued practicing law. Darwin died at Napa Asylum in 1901.